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6/27/15

It hasn't had a mention on the blog to date, but as the last quarter final has just finished and Brazil were beaten on penalties by Paraguay, we now have the full semi-finals line-up for Monday and Tuesday and a few words on each game:

First semi-final, Monday: Chile versus Peru

Host nation Chile has played just about the most attractive football of the tournament so far. The attack has real bite, Alexis Sanchez, Jorge Valdivia and Arturo Vidal are working well together, but the defence looks shaky at times and hasn't really faced a top class team so far, either.

Peru is the surprise semi-finalist nation. For sure it had an easy quarter-final against the very modest Bolivia team, but Peru made its own luck by playing better than anyone expected in the group stage, particularly when getting a point off the strong Colombia team. Peru then showed it had a decent attack by putting three past Bolivia (and it could have been more). The defence is sloppy at times and that will likely be its undoing against the sharpness of Chile, unless Peru manages to tighten up considerably. However the attack isn't bad.

Bottom line: Chile is deserved favourite to win this one. Peru's chance is in an open game where its front line manage to match Chile's for goals, then the game goes to penalties. I'd give Chile an 80% chance of going through to the final, but an upset isn't impossible in this one.

Second semi-final Tuesday: Argentina versus Paraguay

Argentina hasn't played at its best so far and only squeaked past Colombia on penalties after missing a dozen chances during the match. The defence looks great, midfield needs to be a little more vertical and supply the front line more quickly, Messi needs to find his shooting boots.

Paraguay is scrappy and technically good, having improved back to its normal strength under new manager Ramón Díaz (sidebar trivia: all four managers in the semi-finals are Argentine) after a couple of years in the comparative wilderness. Paraguay also drew 2-2 with Argentina in the group stage of this tournament, coming back from 2-0 down and showing real fight and spirit to do so (it also helped that Argentina got complacent in that match and failed to respect its opponent enough). But it won't get the room it got against Brazil today in next week's match.

Bottom line: Argentina will win this match and go through to the final. Against Colombia yesterday it was the "everything-but-the-goal" team, that won't last with such high quality in the squad. When this Argentina starts flowing, it's a pleasure to watch that's beaten only by Barcelona's style and grace (the frustration of watching both of those when not firing on all cylinders exists too, equal and opposite). Paraguay is a respectable team but doesn't have enough to win this game. Peru has more chance against Chile than Paraguay vs Argentina.

As for a call on my likely Chile - Argentine final set-up, I'll defer out of respect for the potential upsets from Peru or Paraguay. Nothing's certain in football and both the underdogs in the semis have their chances here, neither has an impossible task ahead. A post Wednesday on the final, including prediction.

One Lilian Herraez, who is a Federal judge in the city of Rio Grande in Tierra del Fuego, South Argentina, today imposed a U$156.4m fine and ordered the confiscation of ships and other equipment being used by oil companies currently operating illegally in and around the Falkland Islands/Islas Malvinas.

I'd take a guess at the supposed illegality being tied much more closely to the name Malvinas than Falklands but hey, WTFDIK?

6/26/15

A few weeks ago we featured Goldfrapp and Strict Machine as a Friday OT and I was left wondering about the sound. Yes Marc Bolan and yes Donna Summer/Giorgio Moroder, those taken as read, but the dirty sound is infectiously likeable, too. So I was, "Where did this come fr...ah, of course, Butch Vig". Yup, it's this Garbage breakthrough track from 1996 that marked out the dirty sound.

And so, like you do, you go check the old song out to see how the years have treated it. The answer is well, so it's today's Friday OT:

And gotta love Shirley Manson. No compromise, no flimflam, no messing around, straight-up kickass singer. Success is hers, but she's still highly underrated as an artist.

A nice chart-look at the US Dollar (USD) by Gary T over at Biiwii today, right here. The title is "USD; Daily, Weekly, Monthly & Conclusions" which explains the subject matter better than I can in this short post. Go look.

6/25/15

Remember back in late February and early March when these wingnuts told us that the new Apple gold watch would need 746 tonnes of gold per year? Rememberhow IKN reacted to that? These people are certifiably nuts. We're now at the point where you wonder how anyone can take them seriously ever again.

Indeed those 1% or the 1% Illuminati World Master Of Silver trembled with abject fear at the beginning of the fair month of June when Keith Neumeyer of First Majestic Silver (AG) sent a letter to the CFTCto complain that people with mere money are guilty of silver speculation. I mean, how dare they? Imagine a capital market trying to set the price of a commodity merely by its own weight of money...unheard of. As we pointed out a couple of weeks ago...

This of course only ever happens to silver. And is only happening now. It has never happened to any other metal or traded commodity in the history of futures markets.

And they say irony doesn't work well on the internet. Oh how we laughed. Dryly, of course. Anyway, here's silver's progress since then, sat next to gold, the S&P, and even the junior miners using GDXJ.

The Shanghai Gold Exchange will launch a yuan-denominated gold fix by the end of the year, a bourse official said on Thursday, in a move aimed at giving China more influence over the pricing of the precious metal.

"We will be introducing a renminbi-denominated fix at the right moment, we are hoping to introduce by the end of the year," Shen Gang, vice president of the Shanghai Gold Exchange said at the LBMA Bullion Market Forum in Shanghai.

One of theose things you read and go "unsurprised", but it's still mightily interesting when you hear about it. Full note here, plus in about a couple of million goldbug conspiracy theory sites by the end of today.

It's much easier to be part of the herd. And frankly, it was zero surprise to see CNL pop the way it did today because the whole and considerable weight of the Canadian bullshit peddling sellside mining industry is now behind this stock and its Buritica project. My stars those guys need a win and they've latched onto this one in no uncertain terms. When that happens, the outsider voice such as your humble scribe's will always, but always be fully trampled upon in the rush. And that's okay, it's part of the lonely territory covered at IKN.

But be there 3m 4.6m or 10m ounces of supposedly and apparently economic high grading gold at Buritica, your author's opinion of this stock changes not one iota. The people running CNL.to are not suspected of being untrustworthy or perhaps guilty of ripping off the world and getting rich by peddling bullshit, they're stone cold certain rip-off merchants and proven mining scum. Feel free to put your money with them, but when you do be 100% crystal clear that by doing so you're not the solution to anything, you're just prolonging the deep problems in the Canadian mining industry. And when Buritica's political and community risk suddenly goes off scale and the whole project blows up in everyone's face, don't remember this post. Nobody else will either, which is why scumbags like Sussman and Wall get away with what they do.

So I say the same thing tonight with the stock at $3.20 as I did when the stock was at $9, $10, $6 and most recently $2. Avoid Continental Gold, don't go long, don't go short, don't go near. Better to invest in juniors that aren't run by the lowest form of human life.

This is NOT a national poll, it only covers the Province of Buenos Aires (PBA) and that normally favours the Scioli candidacy (by roughly five points versus national polls), but the iBarometro people do frequent opinion polls on a representative cross-section and give a fair idea of where we're going.

However the most important thing is that nobody wins the Presidency without winning PBA, it's virtually hand-in-glove stuff.

A tasty write-up on the current condition of Osisko Gold Royalties (OR.to) and its "gruff and litigious" head honcho, Sean Roosen, out of Global Mining Observer this week entitled "Osisko's Inexplicable Overhead". Find the first part here (pdf download) and the second part here.

The reason for the title is captured in this chart from the piece...

...though I'm not sure why they decided to include Sandstorm in that group, it would have been better to concentrate on the serious royalty companies, not the failed excuses for them. Anyway, go read the note and here's an extract to whet your proverbial labios.

"In less than 2 years, Osisko’s punchy chief executive Sean Roosen has created a sizable new player, putting together royalties over Malartic and Eleonore, Canada’s two largest gold mines. Yet Roosen’s flare for bold, unpredictable deals also points to empire-building by Osisko and corporate largesse, raising broader questions as to how it will allocate its royalty revenue."

6/23/15

Though there's no doubt that your humble scribe strays off his designated blogging path on a regular basis, the whole Greece schamoozle hasn't been mentioned here because it's not part of the IKN remit and there are many, many other places that have covered its happenings more deeply and wisely then this humble corner could ever manage.

There you go, a mouthful of words to say "I don't do Grexit stuff" but today I break that and do just a little because although it's not been a subject for posts, it's an issue I've followed fairly closely in the background. And of all the things I've read, good bad or indifferent, these few lines most closely match my formed opinion. They come fromthis extended piece by Jesse L over at the Café Americain today:

"...these EU economic propeller heads to worry about 'potential recessionary effects' in Greece from raising taxes is laughable. At every opportunity these self-important plutocrats have abused their powers and positions to create massive financial bubbles, which they use to reward themselves and their cronies handsomely. And afterwards, they plunge the public into depression-like conditions with their crackpot neoliberal prescriptions, while pompously prevaricating about virtue and 'thrift.'"

You know what they want? They want obedient workers. Obedient workers, people who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork. And just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shitty jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, the reduced benefits, the end of overtime and vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it, and now they’re coming for your Social Security money. They want your retirement money. They want it back so they can give it to their criminal friends on Wall Street, and you know something? They’ll get it. They’ll get it all from you sooner or later cause they own this fucking place! It's a big club, and you ain’t in it! You, and I, are not inthe big club.

By the way, it's the same big club they use to beat you over the head with all day long when they tell you what to believe. All day long beating you over the head with their media telling you what to believe, what to think and what to buy. The table has tilted folks. The game is rigged and nobody seems to notice. Nobody seems to care! Good honest hard-working people; white collar, blue collar it doesn’t matter what color shirt you have on. Good honest hard-working people continue, these are people of modest means, continue to elect these rich cock suckers who don’t give a fuck about you….they don’t give a fuck about you… they don’t give a fuck about you.

They don’t care about you at all… at all… AT ALL.

As for the the funniest bit*, the Troika, the IMF and the EU will get away scot-free with this rape. We'll see nary a ripple in the fabric of financial society, gold won't budge, the Euro won't zoom or collapse, the Swissie will continue to chug along, normal service won't be resumed because it was never interrupted.

Post brought to you while listening to Chopin's Nocturne opus 37 N° 2 in G major (andante), right here.

VANCOUVER, BC--(Marketwired - June 23, 2015) - CB Gold Inc. (TSX VENTURE: CBJ) ("CB Gold" or the "Company") announces that shareholders have voted in favour of management's proposals as contained in the Company's management information circular dated May 25, 2015 by at least the necessary majority in all cases,except for the motion to approve the Sale Transaction between CB Gold and OM.L Trading (as announced on May 19, 2015).

6/22/15

This is the intro spiel for IKN319. I get the occasional nudge from subscribers to put this-or-that piece from The IKN Weekly on the public blog, but I didn't think for a second that anyone would push me to stick this thing on here. I was wrong, the third mail with the same request just landed this evening and so hey, what the Henry? The only thing that changes is the redaction of a couple of company names right at the end, the rest is as stands.

There's this ongoing line of complete
bullshit commentary in the metals and mining world that's so pervasive it'll
even suck me in on occasion. It's sellside crap to the Nth degree.

·If times are good buy
stocks, they're going up.

·If times are bad buy
stocks because the cycle will come around.

·If times are neutral and
nothing is happening buy stocks, it's a coiled spring out there.

And for sure no, that doesn't just
apply to the mining industry
and its motley crew of assorted parasites, but as this whole sector smacks of
the desperation of wanting SOMETHING to HAPPEN because if not, the blood will
stop flowing and the parasites will have nothing left to feed upon, I'm finding
it all a bit too brazen to bear easily.

We're down to promoting a
"selective bull", peddling expertise in the bifurcating market,
promising riches by choosing the best and forgetting the ones that will have to
die. "Stick with me, I'm the smart
connected writer, and for a modest monthly sum I'll lead you through the
minefield of moose-pasture peddlers and show you the real deal miners".
We're down to cheering any minor move made by silver against gold and ignoring
in finest "LahLahLah I Can't Hear You" manner any macro market news
that doesn't fit the narrative. We're down to pushing conferences
"headlined" by the same abject idiots who predicted imminent
hyperinflation five years ago and who'll just say the same things to their
dwindling band of True Believers in this conference season, and charge them
hundreds of fiat dollars for the privilege to boot. We're down to the sellside
brokerages running half million dollar brokered private placements. We're down
to minor exploreco pumps, to promotional BS games that are turning incestuous
(witness the fun and games between the smarter and the dumber promoters around
Lion Gold (LIO.v) for a good example of how the smartest ones will survive by
eating the neophytes if necessary). I could continue, but the real message I
want to get across is this:

A) Nothing is going to
happen in the metals market until gold takes off.

B) Gold may do something
in 2015, but it's unlikely to happen before the end of the Northern summer.
That's post-Labor Day, that's 3q15, that's going to feel like a loooong time
from today in late June.

C) Don't waste your
money on mining sector commentary. Let us waste our own time, no need to join
us, there's so much more out there that's better to read (for example my own muse at this time, Infinite Jest by David Foster
Wallace).

So do yourself a favour and sell a
few stocks, or lighten a few positions, take some cash off the table and go
play with it somewhere else or save it for when things get fun again because
believe me, this is not fun. Watching the desperation in freeloaders' eyes is
not fun. Trying and failing to explain to junior mining company officers that
the party isn't just over but it's OVER FOREVER is no fun. While you're at it, why
not unsubscribe from this publication and any other that's managed to get you
to part you from some of your hard-earned cash? That's money you could better
spend on your spouse, your kin, your car, whatever you like that gives some
pleasure. If you feel like coming back later in the year you'll be very welcome
here (and I'd vouchsafe that's true for anywhere else you unsub this week) but
I see no reason why you should read and keep so fixated on a sector that's
showing all signs of going precisely nowhere for the time being. Meanwhile I'm
going to keep ploughing on, pounding on numbers, looking at the sector, trying
to find a decent trade or three, but I also know that for the time being I'm
unlikely to deploy wholesale the cash that's still sidelined, any sales such as
the ones announced today are moving details around the edges. My personal plans
include:

1) Selling what little copper
exposure I have left

2) Perhaps selling (name redacted) if a slightly higher out price shows up in the next couple of weeks.

3) Definitely buying some more (name redacted), perhaps adding to the gold producers.

4) Investigating a couple of
interesting explorecos on my radar.

5) Watching the market for any move
that proves my assumption of sector inertia wrong.

...something will come along and cheer you up. For example, finding out that Thom Calandra has been neck deep in Great Panther Silver (GPR.to) (GPL) shares and reco'ing the thing to all and sundry for enough time to hurt. A lot.

IKN319 has just been sent to subscribers. And you can read all about the upcoming 80th birthday for the Dalai Lama which will include a special album with tracks by Sting, Peter Gabriel, Kate Bush and a hatful of other big name singers in this Rolling Stone report right here. And you can find out all about that new album to commemorate his birthday from The Art of Peace Foundation, called "Songs for Tibet II" on this link right here.

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